17 states have sued the Trump administration to force officials to reunite 2,047 children with their parents

SEATTLE (AP) — Seventeen states, including Washington, New York and California, sued President Donald Trump's administration Tuesday in an effort to force officials to reunite migrant families who have been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Undocumented migrants wait for asylum hearings outside of the port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico on Monday, June 18, 2018. Getty Images

17 states have sued President Donald Trump's administration to try and force officials to reunite migrant families who have been separated.

The states are all led by Democratic attorneys general.

Despite Trump's executive order last week ending new arrivals from being separated from family members, 2,047 immigrant children have yet to be reunited with their parents.

The states, all of which are led by Democratic attorneys general, joined Washington, D.C., in filing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Seattle. It's the first legal challenge by states over the practice.

"The administration's practice of separating families is cruel, plain and simple," New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in an emailed statement. "Every day, it seems like the administration is issuing new, contradictory policies and relying on new, contradictory justifications. But we can't forget: the lives of real people hang in the balance."

The states say Trump's recent executive order is riddled with caveats and fails to reunite parents and children who have already been torn apart. They accuse the administration of denying the parents and children due process; denying the immigrants, many of whom are fleeing gang violence in Central America, their right to seek asylum; and being arbitrary in applying the policy.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the multistate lawsuit and had no comment on the Los Angeles filing.

More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks and placed in government-contracted shelters — hundreds of miles away, in some cases — under a now-abandoned policy toward families caught illegally entering the U.S.

Amid an international outcry, Trump last week issued an executive order to stop the separation of families and said parents and children will instead be detained together.

But precious few families have been reunited, and the Trump administration has disclosed next to nothing on how the process will be carried out or how long it will take.

Juan Sanchez, chief executive of the nation's largest shelters for migrant children, said he fears a lack of urgency by the U.S. government could mean it will take months to reunite families.

Sanchez with the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs said in an interview with The Associated Press that the government has no process in place to speed the return of children to their parents.

"It could take days," he said. "Or it could take a month, two months, six or even nine. I just don't know."

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Congress on Tuesday that his department still has custody of 2,047 immigrant children separated from their parents at the border. That is only six fewer children than the number in HHS custody as of last Wednesday.

At a Texas detention facility, immigrant advocates complained that parents have gotten busy signals or no answers from a 1-800 number provided by federal authorities to get information about their children.

Attorneys have spoken to about 200 immigrants at the Port Isabel detention facility near Los Fresnos, Texas, since last week, and only a few knew where their children were being held, said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia.

"The U.S. government never had any plan to reunite these families that were separated," Sandoval-Moshenberg said, and now it is "scrambling to undo this terrible thing that they have done."

A message left for HHS, which runs the hotline, was not immediately returned.

Since calling for an end to the separations, administration officials have been casting about for detention space for migrants, with the Pentagon drawing up plans to hold as many as 20,000 at U.S. military bases.

A U.S. judge in San Diego already is considering whether to issue a nationwide injunction sought by the American Civil Liberties Union that would order the administration to reunite the separated children with their parents.

The states that sued on Tuesday are Massachusetts, California, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.